President Obama granted approval Sunday for Mount McKinley in Alaska to be renamed with the Athabaskan word Denali, which means "the high one."
Obama gave Interior Secretary Sally Jewell the green light to officially change the name of the tallest mountain in North America that has since 1901 honored the 25th U.S. President William McKinley, a Republican, in the wake of his assassination.
"Generally believed to be central to the Athabaskan creation story, Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska natives," the White House said Sunday in a statement announcing the president’s decision.
Obama, who belonged to a group in high school called "the Choom Gang," will officially rename the mountain during his trip to Alaska this week.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Denali, an Athabaskan word meaning "the high one," has been the name used by Native Alaskans for centuries, and Mt. McKinley has long been a politically controversial replacement. A prospector exploring the area named the 20,320-foot-high peak after William McKinley after his nomination for president in 1896. In 1901, after Mr. McKinley was assassinated, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names "hurriedly" endorsed it despite the fact that the president had no connection to the mountain, according to the 1995 cartography book "Drawing the Lines—Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy" by Mark S. Monmonier.
Alaska petitioned for the name change in 1975, a request that has been pending until now. Jewell insisted that she had the power to grant the request if the geographic names board didn’t respond "within a reasonable time."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, (R., Alaska), who during this session of Congress introduced a bill to get the peak’s name changed to Denali, commended the president for his decision.
Obama will use his visit to Alaska to continue to warn about climate change.